Suit filed in death of jailed woman

Family says her suicide could have been prevented

March 16, 2006|By Jeff Long, Tribune staff reporter.

The family of an Algerian woman detained by U.S. immigration officials last year and held in the McHenry County Jail, where she killed herself, filed a federal lawsuit this week against the county, health-care workers who were monitoring her and local officials.

"A woman tragically died in McHenry County," said Janine Hoft, the lawyer representing the family of Hassiba Belbachir, 27, an Algerian national who had lived in Chicago in the months before her death.

Stopped in England on Feb. 27, 2005, and accused of using a stolen French passport, she was returned to Chicago, where her visitor status had expired Feb. 22, authorities said after her death.

Family members said at the time that she had come to the U.S. in November 2004 to join her husband but was separating from him when she attempted to reach Spain via England and win asylum.

Detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she was booked March 9 into the McHenry County Jail, which has a contract with the federal agency. Officials found her dead on the floor of her cell March 17.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleges that jail officials knew Belbachir had health problems, spoke no English, had severe depression and was suicidal.

And yet officials did not do enough to prevent her from strangling herself with a pair of jail-issue socks that had been knotted together, the suit alleges.

"We think that the woman's death, while tragic, was not the result of any misconduct or failure to act on the part of anyone involved in the operations of the McHenry County Jail," said First Assistant State's Atty. Thomas Carroll.

Named in the suit are the county; Sheriff Keith Nygren; Corrections Chief Tom Svoboda; Centegra Health System, which at the time of the incident had a contract with the county to provide medical services at the jail; and several corrections officers, nurses and a doctor.

"I'd love to respond, but I can't," Nygren said. "We litigate these things in court."

A Centegra spokeswoman also declined to comment. Carroll said the county switched its medical provider for the jail last year for reasons unrelated to the death.

According to Hoft, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of the inmate's family: her father and a brother who live in Algeria, a cousin in Chicago, a sister in Canada and two sisters and a brother in France.